


of no consequence at all

by alexsunday



Category: Robot Series - Isaac Asimov
Genre: (mostly), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 20:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4033765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexsunday/pseuds/alexsunday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The meaning of life, as experienced by Susan Calvin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of no consequence at all

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a long and boring car ride. Any and all criticism appreciated. This is my first fic, so I expect it isn't too great, but here you go. 
> 
> Hopefully, this works within canon. I haven't read every single one of Asimov's Calvin stories and some of the dates (or anything really) may be off.

On Monday, March 8, 1982, 7:27 AM, Susan Calvin was born.

Multiple complications arose during the birth, but nothing too out of the norm. Still, Susan's father, Dale Calvin, was highly uncomfortable with the whole procedure and opted to stay out of the room the whole time, reading a pulp novel.

When asked what she was going to name the baby, Lauren Worthy-Calvin replied, "Susan, after my mother." Dale had strongly hinted at naming the child after Marie Curie or at least someone involved in a field of science. Susan Worthy had been a grocery store clerk.

Susan would always maintain that her name played a major part in the stuffiness of her public persona (and, indeed, her actual personality as well), but she was always a reserved child. She preferred to quietly sit and read over the imaginative play of her peers, and her favorite thing on TV was always the news. Her first word, "yes", wasn't spoken until age three, and it came as a shock to her parents.

Dale taught psychology at the local community college, so there was no shortage of textbooks at home. Susan read them all. She absorbed the information like a sponge, judging people's reactions and actions around her by the criteria she had studied. She was able to look down at everyone, even when her age had barely hit double digits, because she knew them better than they knew themselves. People liked to act like they were unpredictable, like they had complete free will, but they just didn't see the strings tugging them like puppets. Societal norms, home environments, education, upbringing, nature vs. nurture, et cetera. Of course, she could never fully predict people, but she had a good idea of them, and she knew why they did what they did.

When she was in tenth grade, she took a psychology course, and everyone laughed. They told her she had to like people to be a psychologist. Psychologists couldn't have a view of humanity as dismal as she did.

"Tell that to Darley and Latané," she said.

"Who?" they always asked.

"Exactly."

There were the obvious dick jokes, as well, because nobody could grasp that psychology could ever advance past Freud and his fixations. She ignored them, partially because she couldn't bring herself to feel anything but contempt at the sheer idiocy, partially because she didn't know what to say.

"You still can't be a psychologist," they said. "Human interaction is crucial. You can't be this distant and detached. People will hate you."

"Fine," she said. "I won't study human brains. I'll study robot brains."

"You can't do that."

"Why not?"

They didn't have a real answer for that, so she did it anyway.

Susan was sixteen, and she was taking a course on engineering, focusing on the fairly recent robotic developments by USR and related, less successful corporations. Once she began to calculate robotic reactions and responses to stimuli, she wondered why it had taken her so long. There wasn't the same factor of random possibility as in human psychology, and although positronic currents and fluctuations caused variations in otherwise identical robots, it was still calculable. And, of course, robots were fundamentally good. They were based on a set of principles that would prevent them from doing any harm, even if most people still had an irrational fear of domination by machines. That couldn't be helped. People feared anything they didn't understand and saw as superior, even if robots were created to serve unquestionably (which, in and of itself, brought up all sorts of fascinating philosophical dilemmas).

The question arose in classes, many times. Did a robot have a soul? Susan always stayed out of these discussions; she never thought it to matter. Did a human have a soul? How can anyone be sure of anyone being conscious if they were not literally that organism or robot? Most importantly, why did it matter? Who cared if a robot was conscious or simply a skilled enough imitation to fool anyone? There was no real difference, in her mind, so she stuck to programming low-level robots, writing excellent papers, and passing the courses she cared little about.

She cruised through high school with a 4.0 GPA and was accepted into Columbia, which meant she got to leave her hometown in Maine. It meant giving up all the quaint things about small towns in Maine, such as the narrow-mindedness of a community that never got exposure to anything outside itself, and the unpleasant winters cold enough to make everything stop working but not moist enough to snow. She had a feeling she would manage.

On September 5, 2000, she started college. She shared a dorm with a stranger she barely bothered to get to know and threw herself into her studies with a passion she barely knew she had. Her GPA remained a steady 3.8. Of course, this required a discarding of an already neglected social life, but that didn't matter as long as her grades stayed high. She got more sleep than her classmates and didn't subsist on a diet of ramen and cheap caffeine like them, which only added to the gap between her and her peers and contributed to her growing sense of superiority and frustration than nobody else seemed to _get it._

"Why don't you hang out with us sometimes?" her roommate asked once in late November. "It can't be healthy, never getting out. Your skin's too pale and I never see you eat."

Susan didn't respond.

"Susaaaaan. Come on. Talk to me. You're stuck with me for a while; might as well be friends."

Susan continued what she was doing, which was dismantling a handheld FM radio she had found on the ground. She rolled her eyes but didn't make any effort at communicating verbally.

Her roommate didn't try to talk to her very much after that.

Sophomore year, there was another roommate, a freshman, though this one was less insufferable. That was nice.

Classes started on the fourth. One week later, the city ground to a fiery halt.

The university got back to normal after a while, class-wise. Susan didn't have the same reaction as everyone to what happened, so plenty of people got angry at her. They had good reason. She understood, of course. But her studies came first. They always came first.

There were two more years of college, and then she was out in the world. It took her a few years to net her dream job, but those few years put a dent in her debt while she worked on her PhD, so that was nice. But at last she was working at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, and it was good. No, it was better than good. It was perfect.

Then Stephen Byerley showed up, and he was the best thing that ever happened to her.

The politics surrounding him annoyed her--who really cared about his stance on the latest hot-button issue? Still, the second the robotic controversy appeared, she was obsessed. It didn't help that she had been recently seriously considering the possibility of a robot humanoid enough to pass as human, it didn't help that the second she heard of the accusation her head started whirling with possibilities like it hadn't since the NS-4 debacle, and it especially didn't help that Byerley was a _very_ attractive individual.

She talked to him, he talked to her, she talked to reporters, and he talked to his opponents. The public made up their minds, and then they forgot about any doubts cast on his humanity when he did what would certainly be considered harm to a human. Even then, Susan wasn't sure. Well, actually, she was. She was a robopsychologist, for Pete's sake. She had spent her entire life studying robots and the way their brains worked, and people honestly thought she couldn't tell if someone was a robot or a person? It was insulting. But she was a scientist, and when she needed proof, she would get it.

It was 2039, and she had a scheduled meeting with Stephen Byerley to discuss the political implications of implementing computerized programs to regulate supply and demand. They were alone and unmonitored; the situation presented itself almost perfectly.

"Prove to me you're a robot," Susan said.

"It's difficult, to say the least, to prove a falsehood."

"Stephen, I'm fifty-six years old. Don't play games with me. You know me; you know my thoughts on humanity. Do you really think I would tell anyone? That would rip the best leader the human race has ever had from underneath its feet. Not to mention if it left this room, we would have a bitter and disillusioned world on our hands, and God knows I don't want that. You can't justify keeping it a secret to me like you can with anyone else. Whereas if you don't tell me, I'll be forced to test my theory some other way. Gamma rays should clear the issue up soon enough."

Stephen showed no change in his impassive, cool expression. He said, "I understand what you are communicating to me. However, if I were to prove my humanity instead, what would your reaction be?"

"I expect I would find myself to be rather embarrassed." Susan coughed delicately into one fist. "You are stalling. Please stop."

He let out a short bark of laughter. "Alright, but I hope you're aware of the questionable ethics of what you're doing. This isn't something to be taken lightly." He unbuttoned his shirt with deft fingers and discarded it with one fluid motion, exposing a well-muscled chest covered in a faint down of hair. The smooth expanse of skin rose and fell evenly with each breath.

Stephen held her gaze as he lifted a hand to his chest and tapped out a rapid rhythm across the upper half. Susan's eyes couldn't follow his motions fast enough, but it appeared to be a sort of code. After about a minute and a half, he dropped his hand back to his side, still not breaking eye contact as a foot-wide strip of skin peeled downwards from just below his pectorals. It stopped peeling once it reached his waistline, exposing electronics, metal, and chips below the surface.

"Fuck," Susan breathed, forgetting for a moment that Susan Calvin did not curse, she did not show weakness, and she did not act like--like this. Like someone forty years and several dozen IQ points her junior.

"As you can see, your assumption was correct," Stephen said coldly. "I hope it was worth sacrificing any pretense of a moral code for."

"You're very advanced," she mumbled, barely caring about his words. "We won't reach this level of humanoid construction for a long, long time. Your maker, he--"

"He will be dead soon. He spent his entire life on the pursuit of this goal, and he accomplished it. As he sees me gain political power and influence, his need to survive, to see his magnum opus flourish, diminishes. He knows I am capable."

"But his genius!"

"Has come to fruition. Perhaps the world is not ready for those like me."

Susan had to admit she agreed.

Stephen Byerley continued to gain status and prestige, and his popularity soared through the roof. The media speculated on why he and the renowned Dr. Calvin had fallen out, but they never figured out the true reason. Susan was never quite sure whether she had made the right call, but she figured knowing the truth was more important than a friendship. They were still on amicable terms, after all, and she was a scientist first and foremost.

And besides, the period of stilted conversation and lingering wistful glances didn't last long. Everything had to die, and Stephen was no exception. It was genius, quite frankly, the seamless way he pulled it off, and Susan was the most vocal supporter of his choice of cremation. Perhaps it was out of a sense of guilt and a need for penance it was too late to give; perhaps she just wanted what was best for the world. Either way, Stephen got his wish, and she was the last living person (his maker had passed away a few years back) to know his secret.

Her retirement was quiet and graceful. U.S. Robots acted like they saw her leaving as a major loss, but she suspected they were a little relieved. She was elderly, stuck in times gone by, and they were a company for the future. It couldn't possibly work for much longer. So she left, a few young people came by her house to interview her about her glory days, and it was nice, but nothing more.

Looking back on her life, it was a list of letters and numbers, of short names given to machines and of rival corporations ticked off as they all went under, so that was how she described it to all those who wanted to know. She knew they were disappointed, but really, they should have expected. Her reputation was that of a cold and logical woman with a blunt way of looking at things. She had softened in her age, but that was irrelevant. To be Susan Calvin, she couldn't be just a person. She had to uphold the standards she had set for herself so long ago. It was better that way.

But children would still show up and ask her about the intimate details of her life for their term papers, and she would answer with tales of Nestors and Daves and (oh God) Herbies. (Too much of her would slip out with Herbie. Each retelling of the tale opened raw wounds, scars that would never heal. She told it every time.)

Susan Calvin was human. She regretted it, but she was. Susan Calvin couldn't escape entropy. Even her beloved robots would break down and cease working, assuming they weren't dismantled first.

Lauren Worthy-Calvin had a family history of strokes, heart attacks, and high blood pressure. Dale Calvin died of a nasty brain cancer that had been passed down from his grandmother. With Susan's genetic profile, it was a miracle she lived so long.

Susan Calvin died on August 21, 2064 of pneumonia. A country mourned and she never knew. U.S. Robots had to make the arrangements for her funeral.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr at veralidaine.co.vu with the username stephenbyerley. 
> 
> Title from Paranoid Android by Radiohead because I am predictable garbage.


End file.
